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Acquisitions
by:
Jane Shadel Spillman, Jorg Zutter, J. Patrice Marandel
Corning Museum of Glass - Jane Shadel Spillman
John and Barbara Olsen were collectors of art glass for many years and they assembled an excellent group of pieces dating between 1880 and 1930. The Olsens recently gave The Corning Museum of Glass 31 pieces of American and European decorated art glass from their collection.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elaborately decorated glasses were popular ornaments in private homes. Most of these objects were meant for display rather than for use. It seems unlikely that flowers were ever contained in many of the vases that were part of this gift or that food was ever served from them. Most are opaque or translucent rather than transparent and resemble porcelain more than glass. The names of the various colours are as exotic as the appearance of the pieces. Judging by their prices, they appealed to an educated upper middle-class audience.
The collection includes various types of bi-coloured and enamelled glass made in the United States in the 1880s and 1890s, including Burmese, Crown Milano, and Peach Blow from the Mt Washington Glass Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts; Coral Ware from Hobbs, Brockunier & Company in Wheeling, West Virginia; and Agata from the New England Glass Works in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Peach Blow and Agata pieces are especially rare because neither type of glass was made for more than a couple of years.
Among the glasses made after 1890 are pieces from the Tiffany Art Glass and Decorating Company, Corona, Long Island, Steuben Glass Works, Corning, the Quezal Art Glass and Decorating Company, New York and the Vineland Flint Glass Works of Victor Durand in Vineland, New Jersey. Many of these pieces are iridescent in the style popularised by Tiffanys Favrile glass and Steubens Aurene. The decoration of these pieces is all done during manufacture rather than added afterwards.
The Cintra perfume bottle, designed by Frederick Carder for Steuben Glass is an exception to this rule as it features a pattern of interior bubbles and exterior cutting. It was considered innovative when it was made in the late 1920s.
Especially rare are four vases with octopus decoration made by the Bohemian firm of Johann Loetz Witwe in the 1880s. This glass has been collected for 50 years, but until about ten years ago, it was thought to have originated in an unknown English factory because the only mark ever found on it is the English word Patent. However, it appears in Loetz catalogues so the identification is certain. These vases were blown in an elaborate mould to form the air-trap design, then gilded with foliage and sometimes enamelled. Brown is the most common colour in this decoration, but the Olsen collection includes examples in turquoise, and orange as well.
The collection features several pieces of cameo glass from the glasshouses of Thomas Webb & Sons and Stevens & Williams, as well as a piece of Webbs Ivory decorated glass. The Museum is very fortunate to have been the recipient of these gifts which substantially improve its collection of Victorian and Art Nouveau glass.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
A gift of Dutch paintings
J. Patrice Marandel
When, in the middle of 2003, Mrs Edward W. Carter announced her desire to donate to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) twelve among the best works from her renowned collection of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings, her gesture was met with the kind of gratitude few museums have had a chance to express in recent times.
In the United States, museums have always depended on gifts for the growth of their collections. Gifts of singleand often magnificent objects have been made with reassuring regularity, but the gift of entire or large fractions of private collections often seems like a relic from the past. With some notable exceptions, it was essentially before World War II that museumsfor the most part on the East Coast and the Midwestbenefited from such large gifts.
Museums in California started more modestly. In Los Angeles the presence of an art museum in the community was little more than a hope before 1945. Only in 1965 did a proper building open its doors to the public. Ever since, the collections have grown rapidly. The strong collection of Old Master paintings now encompasses all European schools from the Medieval period until the dawn of the 20th century. French and Italian artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century are particularly well represented.
To a group of carefully selected seventeenth-century Dutch pictures, including three works by Rembrandt, two by Frans Hals, paintings by Carel Fabritius, David de Heem, Pieter Lastman and Jan Steen, to name but a few, the Carter gift now adds a significant representation of Dutch still-lifes, landscapes, seascapes and church interiors.
The founding president of the Los Angeles County Museum, the late Edward W. Carter, was a successful businessman, philanthropist and an indefatigable promoter of cultural institutions in Los Angeles. He and his wife Hannah began collecting Dutch paintings in the late 1960shaving previously collected some very fine Italian and French paintings. They did so with the seriousness usually reserved to scholars (many of whom were the Carters friends and helped them in their choices) and the pleasure only discerning amateurs can bring to collecting. There is a definite Carter taste. Their paintings, elegantly displayed in their Los Angeles residence, were once described by a former museum director as a perfect string of pearls. They are quiet pictures: no naval battles, no cabaret or genre scenes, and almost an aversion to the human figure. They are happy, peaceful, and grand; no clean and modest interiors, but instead sumptuous still lifes, orderly views of cities, magnificent seascapes with particularly beautiful skies.
Dutch paintings, some might say, are plentiful on the market, but great Dutch pictures are rare. Traded and collected for centuries, they never followed the fluctuations of taste, but for that reason one might also argue that the best examples have long found their resting place on the walls of the worlds greatest museums: the Rijksmuseum, and the Mauritshuis, Londons National Gallery and the Berlin Gem￤ldegalerie.
To their credit, the Carters still managed to add significant works to their own collection. What they achieve in LACMAs gallery specially designed to house them goes beyond the dreams and expectation of the most acquisitive and ambitious curators!
It would be difficult for anyone to choose a favourite among the still lifes by Bosschaert, Clara Peeters, Willem Claesz. Heda or Jan van Huysum, the seascapes of Jan van de Cappelle or Simon de Vlieger, the church interiors of Emmanuel de Witte or Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, the golden landscapes of Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob van Ruisdael, Frans Post or the winter scene of Aert van der Neer. For decades, the Carter paintings have been hailed not only for their beauty, but also for a major element that defines this beauty: their miraculous state of conservation.
The very small Bouquet of Flowers on a ledge (c.161920) by Abraham Bosschaert (15731621) is the earliest painting in the group. Executed on copper, it is small (28 x 23 cm), but in its size resides part of its perfection: each flower and shell minutely detailed and set against a diaphanous landscape, a rarity in the artists oeuvre. In contrast, Clara Peeters (c.1589after 1657) extraordinary Still Life with Cheeses, Artichoke and Cherries (c.1625), is a study in masses, volumes and bold colours: blocks of cheeses, unappetising bread and a half artichoke painted in an almost trompe loeil technique.
Saenredams (15971665) pared-down image of the Interior of the Mariakerk, Utrecht (1651) will be for many visitors the most striking image in the collection. In that painting, the artist subtly modified his subject, suppressing details in order to give his composition more solidity. The purity of the compositionone could almost call it minimalistappeals to our modern sensibility, but another church interior in the same gallery, Emmanuel de Wittes (1616/18 92), Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent (1653), reminds the visitor that Saenredams picture falls into a well-established genre in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, the depiction of church interiors, often executed with moral, political or religious overtones. Dutch painting often illustrates the here and now of Dutch life: it commemorates places and events, and alludes to particular moments of history.
Yet, in the hands of different artists, it strives for more universal themes. Jacob van Ruisdaels (1628/2982) Great Oak (1652) is such painting: its meaning, if there is one, is unknown to us, but the majestic tree set at a crossroads bears a powerful, almost human presence. Real or symbolic, it fuels our imagination. Its appeal and mystery did not escape a great Italian collector of the eighteenth century, Cardinal Valenti-Gonzaga, who owned the paintingthe first painting by Ruisdael ever seen in Italya fact that reminds us of the universality of Dutch art.
National Gallery of Victoria: International
Saint Cloud Spice Boxby Anna Nieuwenhuysen
The first major porcelain factory in France, Saint-Cloud began to produce soft-paste porcelain in the 1690s. Established as a faience factory in 1666, Saint-Cloud obtained an official patent to make porcelain in 1702, with the support of Philippe, Duc dOrl￩ans. The patent stated that the factory had discovered the secret of porcelain and was producing works to rival those of China and Japan. By the early eighteenth century the factory was selling both ornamental and utilitarian porcelain to clients that included members of the Royal family. The factorys success was in part due to the fact that it could produce aesthetic and reasonably priced alternatives to silverware and true porcelain. Saint-Cloud closed in 1766, unable to compete with the more sophisticated porcelain manufacturers such as Chantilly and Vincennes.
Saint-Cloud first produced its signature blue and white pieces painted with delicate lambrequin pendants that imitated designs engraved on silver. New influences from imported Chinese and Japanese porcelain wares inspired new designs with gilding, polychrome and relief decoration. These objects were copies of imported works, the principal source of design being prints and Japanese and Chinese porcelain. Saint-Cloud was also inspired by imports from China of white porcelain, undecorated so as not to distract from the refinement of the body and form of the object. This white porcelain, highlighted with moulded decoration, illustrated the factorys confidence in the colour and form of its soft-paste porcelain.
By the 1720s, Saint-Cloud was producing a large quantity of white porcelain. These pieces included domestic wares such as cups and saucers and sugar bowls, as well as more complex forms such as the spice box. The most copied ornamental device on Chinese white porcelain, the prunus branch, was used frequently at Saint-Cloud. Wine cups with the prunus pattern were directly imitated, and even replicated the spatial structure of the Chinese models. The motif of the chrysanthemum branch was also used and was typically shown with two branches emerging from a split rock.
While initially closely imitating Chinese and Japanese ware, Saint-Cloud soon departed from direct models and began to adapt Oriental influences to create a new European porcelain style. The moulded decoration on the spice box is a result of this mixing of cultures and is closest to the Saint-Cloud landscape decorations which showed rocky grounds covered with clumps of lavish fantastic flowers and leafing plants of arching fronds. This type of design came from the European composite idea of Chinese and Japanese design adapted to European forms.
The NGV spice box is shaped as three radiating compartments, each raised on a foot modelled in the form of a lions paw and surmounted by a berry cluster finial. This shape was most likely inspired from forms executed in silver, and was produced at other factories in tin-glazed earthenware. Saint-Cloud produced this form also in polychrome and blue-painted versions. The lid rotates to reveal three separate compartments which would have held pepper, cloves and nutmeg. These spices were used in cooking and were also presented at the end of the meal to assist digestion.
The spice box enhances the collection of French eighteenth-century soft-paste white porcelain in the National Gallery of Victoria, which forms a focal point of the gallerys decorative arts collection. The spice box by Saint Cloud is in the opening display at the National Gallery of Victoria: International.
National Gallery of Australia
J?rg Zutter
Following a recent assessment of the Gallerys collection of international art, the need to fill some gaps within the collection of eighteenth-century French painting was determined.
As a first step towards this goal a portrait by Martin Dr?lling was acquired in 2001. This full-length portrait in a furnished interior represents both an aristocratic tradition and a new historical era immediately following the French Revolution. Joseph Merceron, avocat au Parlement de Paris (1791), is indeed an excellent example of a Neoclassical portrait.
A pair of landscapes by the French Neoclassical painter Claude-Joseph Vernet has recently been acquired, providing an excellent link with the European landscape traditions of the seventeenth century and the Romantic vision of nature in the nineteenth century. American scholar Philip Conisbee wrote to me about Vernets pioneering role in art history, and underlined that Vernet & did much to stimulate awareness and to shape attitudes to the pictorial depiction of nature in all its varied effects in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Claude-Joseph Vernet was without doubt one of the most admired and influential European marine and landscape painters of the eighteenth century. He trained in Avignon (where he was born in 1714) and worked in Aix-en-Provence. Soon after, several patrons offered to sponsor Vernet on a study trip to Italy, which he began in 1734. In Rome Vernet met his first international patrons, most notably the British, on their Grand Tour. On Vernets return to France in 1753 he began working on a series of large topographical paintings of major French commercial and military seaports; entitled the Ports of France, one of the most important royal commissions of Louis XV that made Vernet famous in Europe.
It is likely that the Irish provenance of the two paintings goes back to the eighteenth century, since Irish milords on their Grand Tour are frequent among Vernets clients in Rome. Vernet was most famous in his day for his portrayal of the Mediterranean coastline between Livorno, Rome, Naples and their environs. Vernets canvases not only suggest Italianate scenery familiar to such travellers, but also are reminiscent of the landscape and marine pictures of seventeenth-century masters.
Both paintings, Mediterranean Port, Calm Weather and Storm on the Mediterranean Coast, date from Vernets Italian period, and their bold compositions and free, vigorous handling, suggest they were painted c.1745 when Vernets reputation was becoming well established. The technique used in these two paintings is typical of Vernets early style: painted on very fine canvas, with thinly applied paint, and a high amount of glazing. This enabled the artist to express a variety of weather conditions as becomes evident in the two paintings.
Vernet often conceived his paintings in pairs or sets of four, to illustrate the different effects of nature in contrasting terrain, weather conditions, times of day and so on. In these works, Vernet contrasts a cool, early morning scene with the rising sun dispelling the mist, with a highly dramatic event showing a ship in a violent storm.
When painting the sky for Storm on the Mediterranean Coast, Vernet applied an almost pure yellow to the forked lightening and a shaded grey to the menacing clouds. The figures in the foreground, Vernets staffage, are painted in a lively manner and involved in specific actions, from the fishermen starting their work early in the morning in Mediterranean Port, Calm Weather, to the men attempting to pull their boat ashore in Storm on the Mediterranean Coast. These foreground scenes, as well as those at a further remove are typical of Vernets style, as are the contrasting effects of nature depicted in the two paintings.
Vernet combined careful observation with a decorative style of painting appropriate to eighteenth-century interiors. Through such pictures Vernet made an important contribution to the development of taste and sensibility in the eighteenth century, and acted in full accordance with the international demand for both sublime and theatrical subjects by collectors. The precise and very detailed depiction of the sailing boat in the stormy sea records an almost scientific interest in shipbuilding of the time that is typical not only for Vernet but many artists of the Enlightenment.
Vernet exerted a huge influence on his European contemporaries and the generation of the Romantics after 1800 and, by extension, to former colonies such as North America and Australia. In Australia the art of Vernet has its place, and was influential on landscape painters such as John Glover.
National Gallery of Victoria
Minton Monkey Teapot by Amanda Dunsmore
&so free and original is Mr Mintons version of majolica ware, that we can scarcely refuse to it the merit of great novelty.
Matthew Digby Wyatt commenting on the majolica display on the Minton stand at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Herbert Minton introduced Majolica wares in England in 1849. They made their first appearance to the public at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Thus began a world-wide craze for these wares.
Jean Franois L￩on Arnoux, who was in charge of majolica production at Minton, perfected the trademark lead glazes. Arnoux was fascinated with fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European pottery styles, particularly Italian maiolica and French Palissy wares, and was keen to reproduce them.
For mid-nineteenth-century England, majolica wares were an exuberantly fresh and original form of art which perfectly reflected the Victorian taste for lavishness and rich, decorative effect. Their bold use of richly coloured glazes and strong sculptural forms represented a new ceramic art form that satisfied the voracious Victorian taste for art objects and decoration.
The popularity of Mintons majolica took off so quickly that other British, European and American factories soon began to copy it. As early as 1852, the S￨vres factory was experimenting with majolica production and by 1860 there were over thirty major majolica manufacturers throughout the world. Minton, however, had developed such a successful worldwide commercial and artistic reputation that its production was unrivalled. The soaring demand for majolica continued right through to the early 1880s, and longer in Australia.
Minton designers called on a wealth of earlier styles and sources for their inspiration, from the Medieval and Renaissance periods, through the eighteenth- and contemporary nineteenth-century art movements, to the use of Chinese, Japanese and Islamic art motifs and forms. From the discoveries being made in the field of natural history there was a serious interest in the naturalism of plants and animals. Occasionally, however, animals appeared in a fanciful role, as in this Monkey teapot. The monkey is clutching a coconut, with a bamboo spout and decorative sprig of bamboo leaves. His head forms the lid and his tail the handle. He wears a brightly coloured jacket decorated with fan motifs, clearly influenced by Japanese art. The incongruous combination of elements on this teapot is typical of Victorian eclectic taste. This teapot may actually represent a joke on Darwins Origin of Species theory, the monkey being portrayed in an obviously supportive role.
During the 1870s Minton began to downsize its scale of production and the size of its majolica wares to suit the needs of smaller, domestic interiors and conservatories. The decline of Minton majolica occurred gradually. The Pottery Gazette of 1882 is quoted as saying that majolica had &become common [and was] no longer the sole property of the rich. Cheap imitations flooding the market stifled production, but ultimately new health laws in the 1920s finished it. These laws restricted the use of lead in glazes, resulting in substitute glazes that lacked the vibrancy and depth of the originals.
Majolica has always prompted a strong reaction in people. Not so long ago it was considered the ultimate in Victorian bad taste but a revival in interest in this quirky ware has ensured its continuing legacy. The Monkey teapot, together with its companion Chinaman teapot, are on display in the nineteenth-century galleries of the National Gallery of Victoria: International.
Bendigo Art Gallery
Patricia Piccinini, 'The Young Family'
A significant contemporary work by internationally renowned artist Patricia Piccinini has been added to the Bendigo Art Gallery collection. Formed from silicone, acrylic, leather and human hair, The Young Family is representative of the artists fascination with science, medicine and abnormality.
The Young Family was displayed at the Venice Biennale in June and toured to the Hara Museum in Tokyo in December, returning to Australia in early 2004. Representing Australia at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Patricia Piccinini joins the list of well-known past representatives including Howard Arkley, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Judy Watson, Arthur Boyd and Rosalie Gascoigne.
Through her work, Piccinini challenges the viewer, and questions the possibilities and outcomes of gene manipulation, cloning and the use of embryos for stem cell research. She does not place value judgments on this type of research. Piccinini believes people look to these technologies for perfection and questions our reaction to the results should something go wrong.
In The Young Family we see an aged, sow-like mother with a litter of suckling pups, the archetypal maternal scene. Her skin and eyes are human in appearance but she has the hairy back and hands of a primate, a snout, long floppy ears and a tail stub of porcine appearance. She has a humane demeanour and maternal generosityPiccinini calls her beautiful and says she is not threatening, but a face you could love, and a face in love with her family.
Mythological creatures such as centaurs, mermaids and minotaurs explored the possibility and possible consequences of mixing animals with humans, long before genetic engineering. Like these mythical animals, Piccininis creature and offspring play with the possibility of crossing species.
Piccininis project is shockingly thought provoking. The Young Family is a major acquisition for Bendigo Art Gallery, purchased at an important time in the artists career. It is a significant addition to the Gallerys outstanding contemporary collection.
QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY
An album of 27 late nineteenth-century photographs
by Claire Gob￩
Late nineteenth-century photographs of Australia provide a complex image of the society of the times. They acted as souvenirs or geographic records of the colonies, provided affordable portraits of both individuals and social classes, and were increasingly employed in the press and scientific endeavours after the 1850s.
The Queensland Art Gallery bought an album of 27 late nineteenth-century photographs of Queensland from a British dealer in 2003. Photographs show Brisbane in its youth, early images of the indigenous people of Queensland and a set of staged bush scenes that romanticise the Australian swagman. This album had been in England for decades, symptomatic of the ways in which much of Australias cultural history disappears from our shores. The insights it gives us into the events and society of the time are significant.
The Brisbane River meanders through the centre of Queenslands capital city, just as photographs of it recur through this album. Historically, the Brisbane River posed a major hindrance to communication and transport between north and south. Bridges proved critical supply lines. Photographs capture the construction of some of Brisbanes bridges, and feature elaborate air locks and innovative engineering designs.
These photographs portray the devastating effects of the floods that frequently ravaged south-east Queensland. In 1893, Brisbane suffered one of its most severe disasters as a series of floods ravaged the city within weeks. The force of uplifted houses crashing into its side destroyed the Victoria Bridge. Later, three ships broke their moorings and were grounded in the Botanic Gardens, only to be refloated soon after.
Victoria Bridge looking south (showing portion remaining after the floods), 1893, records this devastation. The photograph is by Poul C. Poulsen, one of Queenslands most influential early photographers. Historian Jack Cato says Poulsen ran one of the two studios that set the standard of quality in the State.1 He was born in Denmark in 1857 and moved to Australia 1876. With his three brothers, he established studios throughout Queensland, in Maryborough, Gympie and Warwick.
The importance of this photograph is heightened by its presentation in an album format. This provides an original context representing how people collected photographs at that time, and the important role photography played in recording people, places and events. A previous owners annotations add interest.
This album of late nineteenth century photographs is one of several recent acquisitions in this field by the Queensland Art Gallery. As we build our collection towards the opening of the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, it is important to document the early stages of Queenslands physical and artistic development, the very period that gave birth to the establishment of the original Queensland National Art Gallery in 1895. |
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